J.J. Abrams is vacating the captain's chair, but he's not abandoning the Star Trek franchise.

When J.J. Abrams decided to take over the director's chair for Star Wars: Episode VII, most of us just assumed that his tenure with the Star Trek franchise had been placed on an indefinite hiatus. Although an official announcement has not yet been made, a recent interview with the director has confirmed our suspicions: J.J. Abrams will not be directing the next Star Trek movie.

Yesterday, Mr. Abrams and Simon Pegg sat down with Collider to promote the Blu-ray/DVD release of Star Trek Into Darkness, and when the conversation turned to sequels, Abrams was quick to point out that he wouldn't be leaving the franchise entirely.

"It's a little bittersweet," he said. "But, I will say that I'm going to be producing the movie. Whomever it is that directs the film will be someone we all know is going to keep the cast and crew in good hands."

In a separate interview with HitFix, Abrams mentioned Rupert Wyatt as a possible replacement. Wyatt's resume includes Rise of the Planet of the Apes and a 2008 film called The Escapist, so we obviously dig his work.

"He's incredibly talented," Abrams said, "and we'd be lucky to have someone as talented as Rupert. But there are things we're focusing on right now before the director, which is just sort of the fundamentals of where the story is gonna go."

Wyatt's name isn't the only one being tossed into the hat, though, and it'll definitely be interesting to see how the process unfolds. But I, for one, am happy to see that Mr. Abrams and Paramount Pictures are concentrating on the storyline before worrying about who's going to sit in the director's chair.

Abrams wasn't the problem with the new Star Trek movies. He's a good director let down by mediocre writers. I liked his shooting style and he managed to get good performances out of the characters. But characters are only as good as the script they are given. Ewan McGregor gave Obi Wan his best effort, but he was still let down by the bad script.

After watching his interview with Jon Stewart to promote the movie where he explicitly said that he didn't like the things that made the original Star Trek series' good so he went out of his way to cut it out, I humbly disagree. The writers certainly didn't help, but he set them up to fail in the first place.

And I am now horrified that he is being put in charge of the new Star Wars movies...

After watching his interview with Jon Stewart to promote the movie where he explicitly said that he didn't like the things that made the original Star Trek series' good so he went out of his way to cut it out, I humbly disagree. The writers certainly didn't help, but he set them up to fail in the first place.

And I am now horrified that he is being put in charge of the new Star Wars movies...

I'm betting all he's going to do is release another set of original Star Wars special editions with added lens flares.

After watching his interview with Jon Stewart to promote the movie where he explicitly said that he didn't like the things that made the original Star Trek series' good so he went out of his way to cut it out, I humbly disagree. The writers certainly didn't help, but he set them up to fail in the first place.

And I am now horrified that he is being put in charge of the new Star Wars movies...

I'm betting all he's going to do is release another set of original Star Wars special editions with added lens flares.

I for one am glad to see him go. I watched both of the new films, and the first one was so bland and boring that I cannot actually remember a single thing about it. It just kinda faded from memory, and neither star wars nor star trek deserve to just fade into mediocrity like that. The second movie was just plain bad, and not only that, it wasn't even star trek. Change the characters names and you just have any random and generic sci-fi action movie. Hopefully whoever replaces Abrams will do a better job, and give us an actual star trek movie, not just a movie named star trek.

bazaalmon:The second movie was just plain bad, and not only that, it wasn't even star trek. Change the characters names and you just have any random and generic sci-fi action movie.

But there was fan service. If you change the names, then Chief Science Oficer Spork looking heavenward and shouting "Karl!!!!!" is completely meaningless.

There was a lot about the last movie that seemed very silly to me, but I enjoyed it. As I think back to my youth, I remember looking more forward to each Next Generation episode than I did to this movie. Nonetheless, I think that J.J. helped the Star Trek franchise. He brought a homogenized version of the original series to the big screen and pulled in a new generation of viewers to the franchise. Did it need it? Probably not. Was it better off where it was? Maybe? He made money. Let's leave it at that.

Eh. Frankly I liked Abram's movies more than half of the original series movies (I'm looking at you, The Motion Picture). In fact, I probably liked them best, though The Next Generation is still my favorite series.

I think Star Wars is in kinda-sorta good hands, at the very least. I can't really think of anyone better, and it certainly wasn't going to get handed to a new guy.

I'd like to see someone who actually watched Star Trek directing it. You can have your sci-fi and still have your action too, you just need to be smart about it and actually give a shit about the source material and not use it to just make reference after reference to appease the old guard.

After watching his interview with Jon Stewart to promote the movie where he explicitly said that he didn't like the things that made the original Star Trek series' good so he went out of his way to cut it out, I humbly disagree. The writers certainly didn't help, but he set them up to fail in the first place.

And I am now horrified that he is being put in charge of the new Star Wars movies...

At least he watched Star Wars. But that interview, I was actually set to go watch that film but after that..nope. I recently watched on DVD round a friends, glad I didn't watch or buy it.

This is welcome news. Those rumors people were trying to float around that he was going to leave the Director's Chair for Star Wars and return to focusing on Star Trek and his other projects was laughable. I mean, come on. Aside from the ridiculous island full of money Disney likely offered him, there's the fact that he's gone on record as saying he always loved Star Wars above any other SciFi Universe and he hadn't even really known much about 'Trek until he sighed up to direct the reboot. People really thought he'd leave Star Wars? Christ.

I'm kinda upset. I understand his movies apparently didn't feel like star trek movies (never really watched star trek), but I really loved the two films. In-fact star trek was quickly becoming one of my favorite franchises. I honestly think if he directed the two sci-fis, not as star trek films, but its own original IP, they would have been celebrated as great films by star trek fans.

I have mixed feelings about this; on the one hand I like the new Star Trek films very much and was looking forward to the next installment, but on the other hand I've been stoked for the new Star Wars film ever since I learned he was directing it, so I'm sad he's not directing Star Trek but glad he's not left Star Wars. Was there never any hope of him doing both?

I never really got all the Abrams hate before. Then I saw Into Darkness. To be honest, it wasn't a bad film on its own, but it was an appallingly bad remake of Wrath of Khan. The movie suffers heavily by comparison to the original, and it of course invites those comparisons by being a remake in disguise. Being disappointed by the "mystery box" of the film has among other things cemented that I will never watch Lost, because Abrams' record for payoff to mysteries is awful.

I dunno, I liked both movies a lot. I never did watch the star trek series or the other movies though. One argument I keep hearing is that some people say he made it way too accessible to the mainstream community and that's supposed to be bad (I can understand that honestly). Then there's others that say he genuinely fucked up and others that have been fans of the franchise for a long time and say he did a decent job.